From manual releases to safe deployments in 8 days
How a UK SaaS team eliminated manual deploy steps, added CI quality gates, and cut deploy time from 45 minutes to 8 minutes.
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The problem
- Releases required manual steps on production servers — one missed step caused a two-hour outage
- No automated tests in the deploy path — bugs reached production regularly
- Rollback meant restoring from a backup, which took hours and required all hands
- Engineers avoided releasing on Fridays; release days caused visible team stress
What we delivered
- CI pipeline with tests, linting, dependency vulnerability scan, and Docker image build
- Staging and production deploy workflows with automatic health checks and rollback triggers
- 1-click rollback that takes under 5 minutes — tested and documented
- Release checklist and full pipeline documentation handed off to the team
Results
Deploy time
45 min → 8 min
Failed deployments
~30% → <5%
Release frequency
Monthly → Weekly
How it worked
- Understand — reviewed the existing deploy process and mapped every manual step and failure point
- Define Done — agreed acceptance criteria: automated pipeline, working rollback, release checklist
- Implement — PR-based delivery, clear daily updates, team reviewed every change
- Handoff — docs, walkthrough session, access removed — team owns the pipeline
Want a similar result?
Start with a free review of your current release flow. We will identify the top risks and send you a clear fix plan within 48 hours — at no cost.